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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

So, after many weeks adding up
to months of anticipation, I saw The
Master last night in Boston. This undoubtedly comes as welcome news for my
friends and family, as now I’ll probably finally be able to shut up about it.
Maybe. (Apologies also to those following my tweets; I know it’s been inordinately
heavy on the #THEMASTER70MM hashtag lately.)

It was also my introduction to
the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which has the only 70mm print of The Master in New England. It’s a
seriously cool venue. It has the trappings of a vintage movie house, the
auditorium is cozy and charmingly theatrical, and they have beer on tap. The
screen was nice and big, and the sound was nice and loud. I could see myself
frequenting the place every week, if only it wasn’t three hours away.

Here’s a panoramic view from
where I was sitting.

The 70 mm experience was
delightful. It was the first time I’ve ever seen a 70 mm projection and I think
I’m in love with it. Every frame compelled my interest. Colors seemed
especially lush, and details were startlingly clear (especially on some of the
closeups). It was really quite gorgeous. And of course it had that analog “warmth”
as well; it was quite something to see those “cigarette marks” alerting
everyone that a changeover of reels was about to occur. In an age when the term
is, for better or worse, an anachronym, it was really exciting to see a true “film”
once again.

So what did I think of The Master? Well, I liked it. In truth,
I’m a little in awe of it. The common refrain is that it all but requires
multiple viewings, and I suppose I endorse this point of view since I’m planning
to see it again next week, this time a mere 3 miles from my house. (And in
digital, which will be good for comparison’s sake, image quality-wise.)

I think it was not as big a
revelation as There Will Be Blood,
but only because PTA prepped us for this new one with his previous film. In
many ways, I think The Master is a
more shocking and audacious movie than TWBB,
which bodes well for its impact down the road, when we decide just how good it
is, really. (Instant classic? Or failed experiment? Or something in between?)

I could write a review that
would probably end up being embarrassing 6 months or 2 years or 5 years down
the road. I remember coming out of TWBB
and not exactly knowing what to make of it. If you had forced me to put down my
thoughts right then, it’d probably read like a lot of asinine babbling now,
especially when I’m pretty much on board with everyone else who says that it’s
a modern classic, an assessment that was not at all clear to me after the
initial viewing.

What I’m coming to find out
about movies by true visionaries is that you don’t need to make a decision
whether they are “good” or “bad” right away. Let it turn over in your mind a
little, and if it’s compelling enough, you’ll revisit it. I’ve found that to be
the most important question after a movie: Is it compelling? If it’s
compelling, you’ll rewatch it, even if you didn’t think it was very good. And
during those rewatches, you’ll open yourself up to the movie again, and you’ll be
responsive to any of those little things a director puts in a movie that he or
she thinks will make the movie better and a more worthwhile experience and
maybe even the best thing ever put on screen. And if the movie is made by eminently
talented people, there’s a good chance you’re seeing great art.

But if a movie isn’t
compelling, it really just sort of lies there, neither art nor entertainment,
just a vague memory of passing time. If you thought it was bad, it remains bad.
If you thought it was good, it never exceeds that initial judgment—it stays
just as good as you initially thought. And maybe it actually isn’t very good,
or, perhaps, it’s even better than
you thought, and if it is in fact great art, there’s almost no way you would be
able to take in all the nuances it has to offer with just one viewing. (Maybe
if you were Pauline Kael you’d be able to, but I’m talking about the rest of us
mortals.)

Compelling things offer us the
chance to have a conversation with them, to engage in an intellectual and
emotional back-and-forth, to change as we change, to grow alongside us. These
are the sorts of interactions that have the best chance of ultimately enriching
our lives, to affect the way we think, feel, respond—forever. And that’s a lot
more rewarding than just saying “This is good” or “This sucks” all willy-nilly.
Making snap judgments is pretty unfulfilling and empty, and no one comes to art
to feel emptier. That’s why, when something singularly compelling comes along,
we should be excited instead of rushing to praise or condemn it. In an
ephemeral world, compelling things have a defiant permanence. In a world where
there is accretive pressure to get everyone to think the exact same way,
compelling things give you thoughts you’ve never had before. They are opportunities
for personal growth.

I’m not sure if it’s a modern
classic, but if there’s one thing The
Master is, it’s compelling. Very, very much so. And that is more than
enough reason to celebrate it.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Hi all. Sorry for the lack of
updates lately. I’ve been in full-on-writing-the-next-book mode and it’s
consuming every last bit of spare time I have these days. Which is good. I’m
sure you’ll agree that a completed book trumps a few blog entries every time.
And before you ask, the writing’s going well. I remain cautiously optimistic
that there will be a major release from me by the end of the year. It may, in
fact, almost be time to start talking in public venues about what this release
will be. Not quite yet, but almost.(BTW, here’s a handy tip: Never
ask a writer how his writing’s going. Because it’s either going bad, in which
case he’ll wear a pained expression and basically start evincing an unhappiness
that’ll bring down everyone in the vicinity, or it’s going great and he won’t
be able to keep an annoyingly giddy smile off his face and there’ll be a strong
possibility that all he’ll want to talk about is how his characters are coming alive
most vividly or how he successfully solved a plot problem with particular élan
and you won’t be able to shut him up. Both scenarios make for an unpleasant
evening for you and everyone else in the room.)I will say I’m writing the
first book in a multi-volume series. I have high hopes and high expectations,
and I look forward to the challenges involved with working on a giant canvas.When I say I’m working on a
book, I do mean just that—a book, as opposed to a novel. What’s the difference?
To be honest, I’m not sure there technically is one, at least in the way I’m
thinking. Yes, novels are generally book-length works of fiction, while a “book”
can be any genre. All novels are books, but not all books are novels, that sort
of thing.But I also use the term “book”
to describe a particular kind of fiction as well, something distinct from “novels.”
To me, “novels” imply a more literary-minded sort of fiction. “Novels” win
prestigious awards like the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer. They teach “novels” in
college classes. These are not the types of books I write.I admit that this is largely a
semantic exercise. A lot of people would call Deadly Reflections a novel, and they wouldn’t be wrong. This is
just a distinction I feel on a gut level.It’s kind of like the
difference between “movies” and “films.” There’s really no difference between
those two terms, but we all instinctively know there are some movies we would
never call “films.” House at the End of
the Street is not a “film.” Neither is Resident
Evil: Retribution. They aren’t out to change cinematic history, nor do they
aspire to be some great artistic achievement. They are just out to entertain as
many people as possible on a Saturday night in 2012.Likewise, my stories are meant
to entertain, to provide an experience that is as diverting and pleasurable as
possible. I feel weird attaching such a loaded and elevated term as “novel” to
them. Hence, they are just “books” to me.This is not to say that “novels”
are inherently better than “books,” or that “films” are better than “movies.” I
wouldn’t call Iron Man a “film,” but
it is a supremely kick-ass movie, and certainly better than a lot of so-called “films.”
It is true that films have more on their mind. They tackle the big questions
and big themes. But even though films and novels might illuminate the human
condition (or try to), many do so at the expense of fun. On the other hand, movies
and books, as I define them, get to devote themselves solely to entertainment,
an endeavor that I consider no more or less important than what the more
highbrow artwork out there is trying to accomplish. There is something vital
and necessary about a great piece of entertainment, which is why I think
Stephen King’s and Elmore Leonard’s books will prove to be just as immortal as
Salinger’s and Updike’s.Ultimately, there is room for
both entertainment and edification. Sometimes you feel like one and sometimes
you feel like the other. Most people are willing participants in either
audience, depending on how they feel at the time. (“Should I read this novel
that’ll make me a better person, or this other book that will just be plain
fun?”) As for what an artist decides to do, I can tell you it isn’t much of a
decision. An author just writes words as they occur to him, and essentially
does what he feels he can do, and offers what he can in a way not dissimilar to
how most people live their day-to-day lives. It became clear to me early on
that I may not be able to give everyone the secret to life or uncover universal
truths in a virtuosic way.But I could probably tell a
pretty engaging yarn. So I tossed my hat into the entertainment arena and haven’t
looked back and am so far without regret.

—————

With all that said, I’m going
to see a film tomorrow. J I’ll be at the 6:30 showing of The Master in 70mm at The Coolidge Corner Theatre in Boston. I’ve
never been there before, and I’m very excited because it looks like a pretty
classy place, a perfect venue to see what may very well turn out to be my most
anticipated movie of the next 5 years (or until PTA makes another film). I’m
not looking forward to the roughly five-and-a-half hours of travel time
involved to get there and back, but on the bright side it will afford me plenty
of writing time.Have a good evening everyone.

If you're like me—and I suspect
there're more of you out there than one might think—you've been eagerly
awaiting D.T. Max's bio of David Foster Wallace ever since it was excerpted in
The New Yorker 3.5 years ago. And you've also, like me, read and re-read all of
Wallace's published output. You've even tracked down his unpublished stuff, and
are rather blasé about the impending release of Both Flesh and Not, a volume of previously uncollected work,
because you're pretty sure you've read it all. (Which doesn't mean you won't
get it on release day and read everything again, gratefully.) You own multiple
copies of Infinite Jest. You follow
Nick Maniatis on Twitter and compulsively click on every link he deems tweet-worthy. You own the
Charlie Rose interviews on DVD. You have 9 hours of DFW interviews on your
iPod, 3.4 hours of readings (not including audiobooks), 4.4 hours of tributes
and remembrances. You've torn out the pages of a yard sale copy of IJ so you could put the story in
chronological order.

So, if you're such a person, a self-admitted DFW nut, does Max's book have any
juicy new nuggets to offer you, anything you didn’t already know? Well, there
are a couple things, but nothing too major. The simple fact is that if you've
read all the books and all the interviews and all the tributes (and listened to
all the audio tributes and radio interviews, natch) and have gone through all
the supplemental material like the Conversations
With book and Lipsky's Although Of Course... and Boswell’s Understanding
and Carlisle’s Elegant Complexity and
both editions of Stephen Burn’s IJ
companion, and have even watched stuff like that hour-long videotaped interview
with Bonnie Nadell and all the videos of the Ransom Center symposia on YouTube,
if you’ve done all that, well, Max's bio is going to cover a lot of familiar
ground for you. There are some things in Every
Love Story you can tell would be new and interesting for the casual reader,
but you end up kind of skimming a lot of it because when, for example, Max does
stuff like quote from a syllabus from a Wallace-taught class, you not only
recognize the words, you've seen scans of the actual syllabus.

The best part of the book by far is when Max quotes from Wallace's letters.
(Well, when he quotes from letters you haven't already read/heard other people
read aloud/seen scans of.) Wallace was an inveterate writer of letters and
apparently there are copious amounts of epistolary correspondence; Max had some 850 pages of Wallace-penned letters at his disposal. (It seems he
wrote to DeLillo about pretty much Everything, from writing tips to problems
with his publisher to buying a new house.) The letters are written in DFW's
familiar (and therefore comforting) voice; he wrote them with the same
intelligence, wit, and insight with which he wrote gosh darn near everything.
(In that respect he rivals Fitzgerald for having never ever written a weak
sentence. Like, ever. [apologies to TS]) When a volume of his letters is
eventually published, it will be a true event, and pretty close to Holy Grail-type
material for Wallace fans—rivaled perhaps only by a facsimile of the
handwritten IJ manuscript or
"Author's Cut" of IJ with
hundreds of pages of restored cuts (one of the amusing tidbits in the bio: Michael
Silverblatt called up Pietsch to see if he could read the IJ outtakes).

I will say that Max's bio is a nice compendium/repository of most of the available
info out there and is especially helpful in the chronology dept (when exactly
Wallace wrote/published a certain story or essay, where he was living at the
time, etc.). I liked it and I recommend it, and I hope this endorsement isn't
attenuated by the fact that I like reading really anything about Wallace; Every Love Story is a legitimately good
biography. (Though one little cavil: There's no account of the publication of The Pale King. Max takes the
uncompromising view that the story ends on Sept 12 2008, and most of the last
15 pages or so seem to be taken verbatim from his New Yorker article. Which is
ultimately fine (after all, most of the Pale
King info is out there if one wanted to track it down) but I was reading Every Love Story on a Kindle and didn't
realize that there were 50+ pages of endnotes, sources, and appendices (an
index? Really? In this day and age?), and so when I came to the end (only 74%
of the book, according to the progress bar), I fully expected at least a couple
dozen more pages, making the ending for me far more abrupt and aposiopetic than
the ending of Infinite Jest is
accused of being.)

Anyway, onward with the big reveals for even the DFW cognoscenti...

1. The essays were largely made-up

Grumblings about the veracity of the events in Wallace's non-fiction have been
building over the last year, and it turns out with good cause. While the
essays' jumping-off points remain verifiable (He did go to the State Fair, he did
go on a cruise, etc.), the details contained within are probably at the very least
exaggerated. There's no way of fact-checking every little thing, but Max does
an admirable job of uncovering when authorial liberty was taken, pointing out when
anecdotes were invented or stolen wholesale from another's experience. I didn't
mind this revelation too much since I've always considered Wallace’s
non-fiction less important than his fiction. And frankly, it does explain how,
in those essays, everyone around him had a knack for doing/saying the exact
right thing, constantly. But I can imagine the people who unreservedly love his
essays getting their hackles raised as Max systematically shoots down or casts
doubt on their favorite bits (the pinwheeling batons? Most likely exaggerated.
The little girl chess prodigy who knew what “fianchettoing” was? Probably
didn’t exist). For me, the most disappointing fudging Max points out is that
Wallace didn’t belong to a church group, a group that reportedly also had as a
member the person whose house Wallace casually strolls into Kramer-like in the
essay “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s.” Granted, the dissimulation here wasn’t done
for arbitrary or aesthetic reasons; the people in the essay were actually
members of his recovery group, so their anonymity (and, by extension, his) was
paramount. But still. It was one of
those details it seemed the whole (not very long) essay hinged on: Watching the
events of 9/11 unfold with members of
your church. There was a whole other interesting layer to that essay that
gets kind of stripped away now. (Wallace had to know how much more interesting
the essay was with this invented detail. So notable was it that even
Silverblatt went out of his way to bring it up during an interview.) This
exposure dishearteningly casts doubt on all the other stuff in the essay. Think
about that affecting story about his search for an American flag, the whole
going to gas station after gas station, finally arriving at an out-of-the-way convenience
store (that just happens to be owned by a Pakistani), making a homemade flag in
the backroom. After reading Max’s book, it’s hard to imagine Wallace actually
doing all that. It is, however, easy to imagine him writing about doing it.

2. He almost wrote a porn epic instead of Infinite Jest

In the early nineties he did
extensive research about porn with an eye toward writing some sort of
reportage/fiction about it—it’s kind of unclear what it was going to be
exactly. Whatever it would’ve been, it was going to be epic; he apparently got
hundreds of (lost?) pages into it. He was interviewing porn stars, watching
tons of porn, thinking about porn (“Why do many of the movies have a kind of
shadowy, dramatically superfluous character who seems to stand for the man
watching film…and whose final access to female lead(s) effects film’s closure?”),
etc. A lot of his research turns up in his essay “Big Red Son,” passed off as
newly discovered info (see #1). The whole project got derailed, perhaps
thankfully, considering we got IJ instead, though one wonders what Wallace would’ve come up with. A comment
made to a friend years later about the movie Boogie Nights offers a clue: He said it was exactly the story that
he had been trying to write. (DFW would not be so kind to PTA’s next film,
calling Magnolia pretentious and
hollow and “100% gradschoolish in a bad way.” Ouch.) (And but also n.b.: That dream-team dinner just got even more interesting…)

3. He was a p*ssy hound

Apparently. Sure, many people
recount him going off with random women after signings, and sure, he told
Franzen that he wondered whether his only purpose on earth was “to put [his]
penis in as many vaginas as possible.” But maybe he just went back to all those
womens’ places and didn’t actually effect coitus or whatever—like what
supposedly happened with Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation: they went back to her place, she decided she didn’t
want to, they didn’t. (Leading him to base the title character in “The
Depressed Person” on her, allegedly.) I mean it probably went down how it
looks, it’s just that if he had slept with even half the number implied in the
book, wouldn’t there be like a lot more self-congratulatory tumblrs out there,
eg. “I Slept With A Literary God” or something like that? Or even like a blog
account of the evening or something? Well, actually, maybe not.

A few other stray info-bits:

—Viking Penguin sent Wallace a
bill for $324.51 for his reversal of some of the copyedits of The Broom of the System

—Excerpt of letter sent to
copyeditor of Infinite Jest: “The
following non-standard features of this mss. are intentional and will get
stetted by the author if color-penciled by you: Neologisms, catachreses,
solecisms, and non-standard syntax in sections concerning the characters Minty,
Marathe, Antitoi, Krause, Pemulis, Steeply, Lenz, Orin Incandenza, Mario
Incandenza, Fortier, Foltz, J.O. Incandenza Sr., Schtitt, Gompert.”

—Girl With Curious Hair sold 2,200 hardcover copies

—A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again sold 15,000 hardcover
copies

—Oblivion sold 18,000 hardcover copies

—By 2006, 150,000 copies of Infinite Jest had been sold (one assumes
it’s into seven digits by now)

About Me

So I'm officially an author. My book is called Deadly Reflections, and is available on the Kindle Store right this second. I encourage anyone who likes a good love story with paranormal aspects to check it out!